


Scenes From a Life Well-Lived

by dickviolin



Category: Luther (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 17:44:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17349704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dickviolin/pseuds/dickviolin
Summary: In which Justin Ripley isn't dead, he and John end up together like they should do, and I don't plot Neil Cross's murder. Short scenes, totally non-canon.Find me onTumblrandTwitter





	Scenes From a Life Well-Lived

He’s been staring into space for minutes, lost in thought, lost in the plans of this mad bastard with a gun and a vendetta, when a voice, gruff and quiet, cuts through the noise.

“Can I get you a cuppa?”

“Hm?”

“I’m putting the kettle on. Can I get you a brew?”

“Oh. Uh, yeah. Tea, thanks.” Justin is about to turn and go when John says, just loud enough for him to hear, “Is that a northern thing or a sergeant thing? Getting up every thirty seconds to put the kettle on for the boss.”

“Are you accusing me of trying to curry favour with the brass?”

“I doubt you’d get very far currying favour with me. I don’t exactly count as the brass.”

“Well, exactly,” Justin says, “Must be a northern thing, then.”

And in the back of his mind, John thinks, _he’s flirting with you_ , but the front of his mind is entirely taken up with-

 

There’s blood spattered across the floor of the changing room. It’s a rich-people gym, one of those ones that are open twenty-four hours a day, so people who avoid their home lives by staying late at the office have an extra excuse not to see their families. John is considering getting a membership, but he takes a peek at one of the brochures, and it’s so out of his price range he has to blink a couple of times.

“Looks staged,” Justin says. It’s only recently that John has started calling him Justin. He still calls John _boss_. Not _sir_ , mind, just boss, and always with a smile. But John notices these things. The air in the changing room is clammy and close. There are a few forensics bods padding about dressed like plastic bags, but other than that, he and Justin are studying the scene alone.

“That blood doesn’t look fresh,” Justin goes on, “And it doesn’t look right, given the nature of the wound.”

“Which is?”

“Single shot to the head at point-blank range.”

“Signs of a struggle?”

“None. She was probably taken by surprise. It would have been over in an instant.”

 _She_ is still sprawled out in front of them. Her face isn’t visible and her hair is splayed out like a halo.

“Over in an instant?” John questions, finally looking across. Justin has his hands in his pockets and is staring down at the body with a look John can’t read. He shrugs.

 

They’re back in the car, about to set off for the factory, when Justin’s hand pauses with his seatbelt pulled halfway across. John waits for him. He’s gathering his thoughts, about to speak.

“She looks like my sister,” he says at last.

“OK.”

“That’s why I-”

“Yeah.” A beat. “Do you need-”

“Let’s get back and catch him,” Justin says, and he clicks his seatbelt into place. John drives on.

 

It’s their first date, but they only realise it in retrospect, and in retrospect, it’s a pretty crap first date. It’s in the White Lion, the coppers’ pub opposite the station. They’re there because, frankly, they need to be. It’s been a long day. John doesn’t normally do interrogations. They’re not his thing. He gets claustrophobic, sitting in a booth for too long, half-seeing himself in the two-way mirror, waiting for the psychology to kick in. That’s what he’s been doing all day, though, taking turns with Ripley. They did a good-cop, bad-cop play, classic, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. It’s obvious which of them was good and which of them was bad. It was fascinating for John, sitting in the obs room, watching Justin needling him, appealing to him, working him, grinding him down with his sheer charm. And it was Justin who got the goods in the end.

“I’ll open a tab,” John therefore says, as they approach the bar.

“You don’t have to, boss, really.”

“Yeah, I do. You did good work today.” He even takes the liberty of poking him in the chest, which is such a DCI-to-young-sergeant move it’s almost a cliché. “You deserve to get pissed.”

Justin doesn’t push the point, just lets John order them both a pint and lead them into the corner seat. It’s been John’s favourite since he moved to Serious and Serial, and the White Lion became, by default, his local. When he was still fresh meat, still in uniform and dealing with pissed-up tramps and snatched handbags, it was the Horse and Hound. He’d always be found in the centre of the room, beating the boys at darts or sharing some overhyped tale or flirting with the barmaids.

He’s older now. He’s seen more depravity and sadness and humanity than most people can bear. So he sits in the corner, and when he gets the rounds in for his friends, he drags them over to the corner, too, even though there’s a half-decent chance that Justin is currently being eyed up by the desk sergeant from downstairs. He could be there, the centre of the room, the centre of attention. But he’s following John and he doesn’t seem a bit put out. John almost feels bad. But then Justin smiles at him, and it’s genuine, it’s real, he can’t fake that sort of joy.

 

“If this is completely inappropriate, tell me to fuck off.” They’re two pints in, which for a man of John’s size, and a Scouser like Justin, means they’re pleasantly buzzed but not in the least bit drunk, or even getting there. Every word Justin says, therefore, is completely clear, and John can hear each syllable, even over T’Pau, which someone’s just put on the jukebox.

“When did you know?”

“Know what?” John’s playing dumb, but he wants Justin to say the actual words. He’s still in getting-a-confession mode, still needs to hear evidence that’ll stand up in court when Justin inevitably reports him for sexual harassment.

“That you’re gay,” Justin says, matter-of-fact, no nervousness, no nothing.

“I’m not gay.” John finishes his pint.

“Bi, then.” Justin’s still in interrogation mode, too. He’s not giving up.

“Sixteen,” John enunciates. “There was a boy on the football team and I didn’t know whether to go after him or his girlfriend.”

“What did you do, in the end?”

“Split the difference and had his brother.” Justin laughs and almost spits beer onto the table. “You?” he says, after a pause.

“Seven. My babysitter used to bring her boyfriend round sometimes. I worshipped the ground he walked on.”

“Well, there we go.” John says it with a finality he instantly regrets, because he can see Justin wasn’t done. So he waits. Sees if Justin will go for it.

“You know Kelly in Cyber’s going for the sergeant job?” He doesn’t, then. John sits back.

 

It’s later on, when they actually are pissed. To the point where they’re staggering down the road doing impressions of people.

“Sure, Ripley,” Justin drawls in a terrible Northern Irish accent, “Do I still smell like I’ve just had a spliff?” He’s supposed to be doing Benny, but it’s awful, and they both know it, and soon they’re doubled up. They get to an alleyway just next to John’s tube station when Justin stops abruptly and lights a fag.

“Can I?” John says, realising he hasn’t brought his, because he gave up five years ago. Justin pats his pockets, frowns.

“That was my last, sorry. We can share.”

“All right.”

Justin takes a drag and passes it over. John notices, because he notices these things, that he holds it between index and middle finger, while John holds it with thumb and forefinger, pointing towards his sleeve. Justin notices too, because he looks over and says, “Don’t worry, I won’t tell the prefects.”

John snorts and takes a drag and hands it back and Justin takes it but he doesn’t put it to his lips. Instead, he reaches his free hand out and leans up- maybe he even goes on his tiptoes- to press his lips to John’s.

“Was that-”

“No. Not at all.”

“Good.” And he does it again, still tentative, until John takes the lead and slips his tongue in, and Justin tastes sweet and light, despite tasting of booze and cigarettes and God-knows-what-else.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” John says at last, and there’s a shine in Justin’s eye.

 

The next day, someone’s sliced a rent boy from navel to throat and spread his guts across a hotel room, so there’s not much room for flirting, and they’re tied up with that for the rest of the week. There’s no time for tension, either. They just have to get on with it. It’s not until late on a Saturday night, when they’ve both decided they’re too tired to be of any use, that it comes up again.

“I can drop you off at home,” John says, as they head across the floodlit car park. The moon is shining bright enough to put the lamps to shame and there’s a slight breeze on the air.

“Well, you know, you don’t have to.”

John frowns. “This time of night, you’ll have to get a bus. Tube’ll have stopped running an hour ago.”

An impatient little sigh makes John look over. Justin has stopped.

“I mean, you don’t need to drop me off at home.”

“Oh.”

“Or- or have I completely misread-”

“No, no-no-no, no. No, I mean, get in.” And he does, sits beside John, turns the radio up out of habit, says nothing. John’s hands tighten around the wheel. They get to his flat, walk up the steps. John turns the lock in the key and he can hear Justin’s breathing.

“Do you want a drink?” he says, as he turns the lights on and throws his coat over the sofa.

“No,” Justin says. He’s standing in the dead centre of the room under a yellow lightbulb and John has to pause to take it all in, before he goes across and gets what he came for.

 

John can hear Benny thinking. He can hear him mustering up the words. He waits. He knows what’s coming.

“So,” Benny says at last. John rounds a corner. They’re on their way to search a house, or rather, a squat, and Benny’s come along to- well, to do whatever it is Benny does that helps them catch nonces.

“So,” John echoes.

“You and DS Ripley.” He says it with an implied wink, as if Justin were the big man on campus that all the brass were trying to get a piece of and it just happened to be the maverick, Luther, who got in first. That’s not how it is. He hopes that’s not how it is.

“Yeah,” he says.

“How does that…work?”

John shoots him a look. He recoils. “God, no, I don’t mean like _that_ , Jesus. I just mean- with you being- and him-”

“It’s early days,” John says.

“But you’re optimistic?”

“It’s a relationship, not a fucking football match.” A beat. Benny catches his eye in the rear-view mirror. “I’m optimistic.”

“Good on you,” Benny says. “I take it I’m not to mention this again?”

“If you do, I’ll stop giving you bottles of my piss for drug tests.”

“Message received.”

 

They’re both out of the force when John proposes to him. Justin has become a social worker, working with teenagers with drug problems. He’s good at it, of course. He comes home crying some nights, and he works long hours, and John suddenly feels very sorry for Zoe in a way he never did at the time. But he puts his heart and soul into it, and he gets results in the same way he did when he was a copper, and John could watch him do it forever. John, for his part, has taken advantage of his name sounding like an author’s and taken up writing. Some of it is memoir, the highlights of his career (so to speak). But lately he’s been working on a character, a private detective, a woman with red hair and a strangely clear voice. His editor asks him where the idea came from and he just shrugs.

Anyway. He’s done the whole getting-down-on-one-knee thing before. He can’t be arsed again, and he knows Justin can’t, either. So when he asks, he just asks, over spaghetti carbonara and wine. The TV might have even been on.

“Will you marry me?” he says. Later, people ask him why, and he just says, _because there’s no one else I want, there’s no one else’s opinion I care about, there’s no one else who sees through me like him._

“Yeah, of course,” Justin says.

“Good,” John says, and it is.


End file.
